House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that climate change has contributed to the surge of migrant children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Pelosi said, “There are more children, about 600, 700 more children, unaccompanied children coming over the border. This is a humanitarian challenge to all of us. What the administration has inherited is a broken system at the border, and they are working to correct that in the children’s interest. I’m so pleased that the president, as a temporary measure, has sent FEMA to the border to help facilitate the children going from one 72-hour issue where they are cared for as they are transferred into family homes or homes that are safe for them to be. So this, again, is a transition for what was wrong before to what is right. Of course, we have to also look to Central America, Mexico, and the rest. The corruption, the violence, all of that.”
She added, “My most recent trip to the northern triangle, that would be Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador. You saw the impact of climate change. These people were leaving because of the drought. They couldn’t farm, and they were seeking other ways to survive. There are many reasons to go into this, but the fact we have to deal with it at the border, and some of the people coming there are seeking asylum. I always like to quote our friends in the Evangelical movement. At one of our hearings, we had before the majority of the representatives said to us. The United States refugee resettlement program is the crowned jewel of American humanitarianism. So we have certain responsibilities that we must honor. We have to have a system that accommodates that, and that is what the Biden administration is in the process of doing.”
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